So often, when we go about holding our heads upon our necks, we fail to consider how our posture is communicating our professional ambition—nay, our superiority.
On July 8, Deutsche Bank began laying off 18,000 workers across its international offices as it retreats from the equities business, reducing the size of its workforce by roughly a fifth. The layoffs, which are expected to be concentrated in New York and London, are striking in scope. But the German bank is by no means an outlier.
Ahh, vacation! A whole week in which to swim, sleep, lounge around with your paperback of choice, and recharge from your insanely demanding job. Surely you’ll come back to work bursting with positive energy, ready to dive straight back into 12-hour workdays, unreasonable deadlines, an exploding email inbox, and the constant, sinking sensation that you are so hopelessly behind that an important person must already be on their way to come and yell at you.
Karl Marx was not a fan of Taylor Swift. We can state this with certainty, mainly because the pop singer was still several generations away from being born back when Marx was penning revolutionary critiques of capitalism in the 1800s. Had they been contemporaries, though, the German philosopher and economist might very well have been humming along to “Bad Blood” while describing the process by which the private ownership of capital takes away workers’ stake in the products of their labor.
Jony Ive was a legend at Apple. The design visionary achieved a kind of creative mind-meld with company co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs to devise the minimalist, space-age look of transformative gadgets like the iPhone, iPad, and iPod. After Jobs’ death in 2011, Ive poured his considerable energy into the development of the Apple Watch and the construction of Apple’s new glass-walled, doughnut-shaped headquarters in Cupertino, California.
On Friday, the US women’s soccer team defeated France in the World Cup quarterfinals in a match that some anticipated would be “the biggest game in women’s soccer history.” But off the field the US women’s team is engaged in a battle with even higher stakes: the fight for pay equality.
The sight of kids drawing on the pavement with sidewalk chalk is practically guaranteed to induce a bout of nostalgia. As summertime traditions go, getting down on the ground to let one’s artistic imagination run wild is right up there with running through sprinklers and setting up lemonade stands.
Whenever I have to stay home sick from work, I’m always uncertain about how much detail to give. Do I let my boss know that I have the stomach flu, specifically? Or would she prefer the simple elegance of “feeling under the weather?”
The classic MTV animated series Daria was beloved for its satirical take on the suburban high-school experience. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the Doc Martens-clad title character was a beacon of light for smart girls everywhere, casting a witheringly witty gaze on school dances, gym class, and the concept of popularity itself. Now MTV is rebooting the series, with plans to bring its trademark sarcasm to a new setting: the modern workplace.
In today’s tight labor market, companies are increasingly aware that family-friendly benefits can help them stay on workers’ good sides. Target, for example, announced this week that it’s increasing paid parental leave and childcare benefits for its 350,000 workers, including part-time staff, while Nike revealed plans to expand its popular subsidized daycare program (and ran into some employee backlash in the process).
Alexis Ohanian is one very high-profile dad. In the nearly two years since he and his wife, tennis superstar Serena Williams, had their daughter, Olympia, the Reddit co-founder and venture capitalist has made fatherhood a key part of his public image.
Over Memorial Day weekend, a mountain highway in Colorado was just minding its own business, being a nice, normal road and facilitating the transportation of automobiles and trucks hither and yon. Then, with a crash and a mighty roar, two giant boulders hurled themselves off a cliff and onto Highway 145, shutting down traffic, trapping people in towns they did not wish to be in, and ruining one restaurant’s plans for a fun holiday motorcycle parade.
Failure is quite literally baked into the premise of the Netflix series Nailed It. The reality baking competition, which recently debuted its third season, asks contestants to replicate ridiculously extravagant confections—a bust of Napoleon Bonaparte created out of puff pastries, say, or a cake decorated to look like a ski slope, complete with fondant penguins whizzing down whirls of snow-white frosting.
Going into a job interview is a stressful experience, but coming back from one can be just as nerve-wracking. Did I fumble that last question? Did the interviewer think I was too inexperienced? Was my handshake off-putting? Sometimes, there’s just no way of knowing.
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” Mary Oliver asks in the most famous line of her beloved poem “The Summer Day.” It’s a quote that has appeared widely on greeting cards, mugs, prints, and bracelets and emerged as a popular tattoo choice, ensuring that people have boundless opportunities to read Oliver’s inspirational words and become fully freaked out by the reminder that life is fleeting and we’ve got to commit to some kind of plan about how to make the most of it, stat.
Though she arguably had claim to enormous wealth before her split from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, MacKenzie Bezos’ divorce settlement solidified her standing as the fourth-richest woman in the world, with a net worth of roughly $36 billion, according to Bloomberg. Now she’s marking her newly single status with a pledge to give at least half her wealth to charity.
“Do what you love” is career advice that’s easy to give, but notoriously hard to follow. For one thing, we can’t always accurately predict what kind of job we’ll love until we’re actually doing it. For another, we may love doing a lot of things: solving math problems, helping others, interior decorating, eating pie, playing with dogs. That doesn’t exactly help narrow down the field.
I am not married, but I do have a work wife. Neither of us ever proposed. As with so many great romances, things just unfolded naturally. One minute Meredith and I were proofreading each other’s work, the next we were riffing on one another’s jokes, swapping stories about our childhoods, and live-blogging our work days to one another over Slack.
It’s hard to think of many upsides to having acne. (Good if you like … surprises? The color red? Doing science experiments on your skin to make zits go away?) But experiencing breakouts as a teenager may have its advantages in the long term.
When my New York-based job sent me to London for a few months last year, I envisioned a cheery jaunt across the pond. I’d ride double-decker buses, graze on Sunday roasts at the local pub, and take advantage of all those cheap flights to various European locales. Happily, I got to experience those things. But I also experienced something I hadn’t planned on—a lesson in the dangers of burnout.
Amy Poehler prides herself on bringing talented people together—whether that involves directing some of her best friends and fellow comedians in the new Netflix film Wine Country or elevating the voices of younger women as the executive producer of critically adored TV series like Broad City and Russian Doll. Key to her success may be one hard and fast hiring rule: Talented jerks need not apply.
Lattes! They are a gratuitous expense and you are an idiot if you buy one without first maxing out your 401(k) contributions and making a down payment on a house like a responsible adult, as JPMorgan Chase recently informed its customers. Also, people who buy lattes are hated by everyone, including themselves.
There’s a telling anecdote in Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes’ recent New York Times op-ed arguing that it’s time to break up the social media giant. When Yahoo sought to buy Facebook for $1 billion back in 2006, CEO Mark Zuckerberg resisted because he didn’t like the idea of working for Yahoo’s then-boss, Terry Semel.
Quick: Do you know what phase the moon is in right now?
